How much does a B2B prospection campaign really cost?
B2B prospection is a mid to long-term investment that can generate a huge ROI
4/10/20264 min read
How Much Does a B2B Prospecting Campaign Cost?
B2B prospecting has a bad reputation: it doesn't work, it's useless, it achieves nothing, it spams prospects and damages your brand reputation...
And honestly, I completely agree with some of that criticism. The way salespeople "prospect" in most B2B companies is often completely pointless.
See here why your salespeople aren't prospecting effectively.
The real reason behind this lack of effectiveness isn't that prospecting doesn't work. It's that very few people actually know how to do it properly, or have the discipline and organization required to maintain their efforts over the long term.
Personally, I've worked as a B2B Business Developer in three different B2B startups, and I've only come across one person who genuinely knew how to prospect.
That's actually how I learned the trade and managed to source and close several dozen B2B companies myself, including two large corporations, through multichannel B2B prospecting while working full-time.
However, for informational purposes, I've almost never met a Sales Director or Head of Sales who actually knew how to prospect. I believe this is the case in only 15–20% of B2B companies, perhaps even less.
This might be one of the reasons why so many startups struggle to take off.
B2B cold calling, and prospecting in general, involves numerous technical skills that need to be mastered.
Beyond all that, let's look at the financial side of things: how much does a successful prospecting campaign actually cost, and what kind of ROI can you expect?
Even a Good Campaign Takes Time to Generate Results
There aren't really any universal benchmarks for what constitutes a "successful prospecting campaign".
Every target audience, every market and every B2B product is different.
However, most people agree that B2B prospecting isn't worthwhile when the average deal value is extremely low.
The first benchmark is making sure your prospecting efforts don't damage your brand.
To achieve this, you need the right mindset when cold calling and a proper system for managing your leads.
See here for more information on how to prospect without harassing your B2B prospects.
Another useful benchmark concerns the type of audience you're targeting.
It's generally much easier to prospect small businesses, independent professionals and/or smaller public-sector organizations through cold calling.
They tend to answer the phone much more frequently and are generally easier to reach.
Sometimes, it's possible to generate at least 3 meetings per day.
This applies to all target audiences that aren't heavily approached by salespeople. As a result, you'll often be able to generate more meetings per day through cold calling than with other types of prospects.
See here for more information on how to succeed at cold calling.
For larger SMEs, mid-sized companies and enterprise accounts, prospecting is generally more challenging.
That said, with a good technique and a solid cold-calling pitch, it's still often possible to generate between 1 and 4 meetings per day, depending on the target audience and the product you're selling.
To summarize:
Enterprise accounts: 1–4 meetings per day.
Small businesses and independent professionals: 3–6 meetings per day.
These figures apply specifically to the cold-calling component of your campaign.
Cold Calling Can Be Expensive, So You Generally Need a High Average Deal Value
Since the average B2B closing rate is between 5% and 25%, you'll generally need between 4 and 20 qualified meetings to acquire one new customer.
For enterprise prospecting, this means you'll need at least 5 days of cold calling by an experienced professional to generate one new customer, assuming a 10% closing rate.
For smaller businesses, 2 to 3 days of prospecting could be enough to acquire one customer, although the average deal value will generally be much lower.
Keep in mind that these are the results achievable by an expert cold caller who has mastered the best opening lines, developed a strong pitch, built a good prospecting list and uses the best tools available on the market.
I'm also not talking about meaningless meetings booked in less than a minute on the phone, where prospects fail to show up most of the time.
I'm talking about genuine, solid meetings with the right decision-makers.
An expert cold caller will generally cost at least €350 per day, excluding data enrichment costs.
This means it will often cost at least:
€1,750 to acquire one enterprise customer.
€1,050 to acquire one customer among smaller businesses.
See here for more information on how to improve your closing rate.
I've used a 10% closing rate for these calculations. However, for enterprise accounts, the closing rate can sometimes be closer to 5%, meaning the acquisition cost could ultimately be twice as high.
Be Careful With Sales Cycles: Prospecting Is a Medium- to Long-Term Investment
In any case, you won't acquire a customer immediately.
Sales cycles are often around 3 to 6 months for SMEs and mid-sized companies, and 12 months or more for large corporations. They can sometimes be shorter when targeting smaller businesses.
There are often misunderstandings about this, which can prematurely bring an end to prospecting campaigns that are actually going quite well.
See here why prospecting campaigns often fail before the three-month mark.
Conclusion: What Kind of ROI Can You Expect?
To conclude, provided your product has reasonable product-market fit and addresses the needs of at least part of your target market, it's often possible to generate a strong ROI from a well-executed prospecting campaign.
However, this is only true if your product generates sufficient lifetime value (LTV), meaning the total revenue generated throughout the entire B2B customer relationship.
For enterprise prospecting, I'd recommend a minimum LTV of €6,000.
For small businesses, independent professionals and smaller organizations, you can generally cut that figure in half.
You can send me an email (louis@outbound-machine.com) if you're considering outsourcing your sales prospecting or would like professional guidance to learn how to master it yourself.